The use of cellular mobile telecommunications has undergone substantial growth over the past few years. Due to a growing customer base, cellular mobile telephone service providers and cellular mobile telephone service resellers are faced with serving an increased number of new subscribers demanding diversified cellular services which include voice and/or data communication. Also, a growing number of existing cellular mobile subscribers tend to switch back and forth between various voice and data service providers depending on the marketing and sales incentives offered by any one of such providers to newly signed-up cellular mobile subscribers. The foregoing shifts and variations in customer - supplier and customer - reseller relationships require programming, as well as reprogramming, of the cellular data telephone sets each time a customer subscriber desires a change.
Typically, cellular service providers require that any prospective customer take the cellular telephone set, after purchasing it, to an authorized service center for programming so that such telephone set becomes an authorized cellular service user set. In the case of cellular service resellers, prospective subscribers are often asked to send the telephone set, after purchasing it, to an authorized agent for programming. In either case, the procedure is cumbersome and costly to the customer, as well as to the provider or reseller, because delays are encountered prior to the start of service. Therefore, there exists a need for a method and an apparatus for programming mobile data telephone sets in a manner that quickly, reliably and cost-effectively provides voice and data service to new or existing customers.